Education

Conflict or blood diamonds fuel conflict, civil wars and human rights abuses. They have been responsible for funding recent conflicts in Africa which resulted in the death and displacement of millions of people. During these conflicts, profits from the illegal trade in diamonds, worth billions of dollars, were used by warlords and rebels to buy arms.

An estimated 3.7 million people have died in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, and Sierra Leone in conflicts fuelled by diamonds.

While the wars in Angola and Sierra Leone are now over and fighting in the DRC has decreased, the problem of conflict diamonds hasn't gone away.

Despite the fact that an international diamond certification scheme called the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme was launched in 2003, conflict diamonds from Cóte d'Ivoire are finding their way through Ghana into the legitimate diamond market. As the brutal conflict in Sierra Leone has shown, even a small amount of conflict diamonds can wreak enormous havoc in a country.

Between 1991 and 2002 over 50,000 people were killed, over 2 million displaced within the country or made refugees, and thousands mutilated, raped and tortured. Today, the country is still recovering from the consequences of the conflict.

Global Witness briefing documents:

The Kimberley Process at Risk.

The Kimberley Process update.

Broken vows.

The truth about diamonds.

The US diamond sector.

For more information visit Global Witness' or Amnesty International's conflict diamond section. See also diamondfacts.org from the world diamond council and realdiamondfacts.org who parady the WDC site. These sites give two good perspectives on both the good and the bad that diamonds do.

Please note that the bodies above are listed for information purposes only and do not necessarily endorse our scheme.